Nope. No Supplements**. Not on Fast Days, not on Slow Days. I’m 68 years old and the whole supplement industry is rubbish. If you eat a healthy diet on all days, you do not need supplements. That’s the opinion of my MD as well as my son with the PhD in Biology.

**I do take a Vitamin D since I live at a high latitude and need to bolster bone health. Recommended by MD.

Honestly, I’ve never heard of the thing on your list. Wouldn’t know what they are for.

@fasting_me I dunno. All I can say is that the Ester-C has made my gums much healthier and the Berberine helped clear up a nasty urinary tract infection I had recently. Oxaloacetate is somewhat obscure, but it appears to help with brain health. Trans-Pterostilbene and nicotinamide riboside appear to be somewhat obscure as well, but there is a supplement with lots of research behind it called Basis and it is composed of these two ingredients.

As my son the Biologist would say, “Remember the placebo effect.”
Healthy gums come from brushing, flossing, and WaterPiking.
Sorry about the UTI you had. No antibiotics or high-acid diet instead?
For brain health, the Fast Diet builds new brain cells [clinically proven]. What evidence of Oxaloacetate helping? The .com raises red flags for me.

Bottom line: you asked for opinions about supplements, and I gave you mine. Up to you what to do next.

Sure I take supplements. The sad fact is that modern farming produces a very inferior product. The soil is depleted and modern produce is way down on nutrients compared to the same stuff 50-100 years ago.

In order to lift heavy hunks of metals, bodybuilders need to push their bodies to that limit. As we know, weightlifting can be hard on the body. So, Good bodybuilding supplements can help to support your body’s health while optimizing workout results.

I’m with Fasting_me on this one! I don’t believe the average person has any need to take artificial supplements (vit D in the NH being the possible exception). You should be able to get everything you need from what you eat. So, unless your doctor diagnoses a deficiency which needs correcting, I’d recommend saving money on pills and spending it instead on a healthy balanced diet.

I get sufficient vitamins and minerals and my gut health is very good thanks to my diet which includes plenty of homemade organic kefir and yoghurt, fermented foods and a wide variety of free range and organic products. I would be astounded if I was low on magnesium and/or zinc as my diet regularly includes many of the foods cited as good sources of both.
I also have sufficient levels of D3 as I ensure I spend plenty of time out in the fresh air.

Of course we are all the exception to the rule. The truth is unless you’ve been tested u don’t know. I attended a nutrition seminar for athletes nutritionists and trainers. We were all tested for d and red blood cell magnesium and zinc. 50% tested sub optimal for d 80% for magnesium and zinc. These where people that are well educated and still they where deficient.

Now I supplement more d magnesium and zinc and I maintain optimum levels by testing every six months

The practice of supplementation is really fascinating. The fact that so many people spend tens of millions of dollars each year doing it leads one to suspect there may be something to it.

I am always interested when someone says they get all of the vitamins and minerals they need from their food. That comment contains two very basic assumptions.

One, is that they know exactly which vitamins and minerals they need for optimal health, and in what amounts. Two is that they know that their diet provides all of the vitamins and minerals on ‘the list’ in the correct amounts.

Using the governments’ lists of daily requirements is questionable, because there is no evidence they are accurate and, as discussed in some other posts in other threads, the contents and amounts in the lists are often determined not by any science but by politics. Nevertheless, research shows that the diets of up to 50% of ‘normal’ people (those not eating healthy diets, whatever they are) are often materially deficient in many of those listed vitamins and minerals.

What to do?

I think that Dr. Longo’s take on supplementation is the best I’ve heard so far both for those that think they get all of the nutrition they need from their diets and those that suspect they may not be getting as much as they should be getting.

Admittedly putting words in his mouth, Dr. Longo feels that today’s knowledge of exactly which nutrients the body needs, and in what amounts, is inexact and will constantly change as new knowledge about nutrition is acquired. He suggests that in the future, beliefs that some nutrients we currently think we need more of will instead turn out to be wrong, and less will be indicated, while we will find some we don’t think we need much of today will be changed to needing more of tomorrow.

His position is that he feels that even when following his Longevity Diet, which is probably one of the most ‘healthy’ on the planet, a person should take a high-quality multivitamin supplement once every three days. That way, if you are (unknowingly) getting too little of something from your diet, you will get more of it, while at the same time protecting against unknowingly taking overdoses of nutrients that might some day be determined to be less healthy than we currently think.

For his exact words, see ‘The Longevity Diet’ by Valter Longo. A read for anybody looking for ‘the other health benefits’ of fasting.

Well there’s certainly a lot of unknowns and a lot of assumptions all round.

From what I’ve read of the research, for otherwise healthy people with balanced diets, multivitamins don’t provide any obvious benefit.

So I’m not going to line the pockets of big business by taking supplements on the off chance that I’m deficient in some nutrient (and that deficiency is dangerous to my health), and that the supplement I’ve randomly chosen happens to be the right one to correct the deficiency.

My comment is based on the fact that I believe a healthy and varied diet gives me all the nutrients I need. That doesn’t necessarily mean I consume the amounts that have been designated as necessary for optimum health because as you have said, the amounts of nutrients needed by the body is not an exact science and daily requirements figures are recommendations and not determined by science.

Those who don’t eat a healthy diet or exclude food groups would almost certainly benefit from taking supplements but I don’t think anyone should be taking them without medical advice.

My work/ education background is lifestyle healthcare, although I no longer practice. Throughout my working life I saw very few clients or coworkers who consistently ate the balanced diet they imagined. Thankfully random supplementation is far less common here in the UK than in North America.

“I attended a nutrition seminar for athletes nutritionists and trainers. We were all tested for d and red blood cell magnesium and zinc. 50% tested sub optimal for d 80% for magnesium and zinc. These where people that are well educated and still they where deficient.”

With respect none of those job titles indicates to me any more than minimal knowledge on healthy eating and dietetics. There would be no need for a professional who is well-educated in nutrition to attend such a seminar.

IME athletes and most Personal Trainers come from the sports end rather than the healthcare end of the fitness spectrum. A shocking proportion get their diet and supplement ‘information’ from fitness magazines and from one another.

‘Nutritionist’ is not a protected title in many countries. Practically anyone can style themselves as one. Here in the UK well-educated professionals include ‘registered dieticians’ and ‘registered nutritionists’.

Not been on for a while – there did use to be search capability with forums,didn’t there?
I did post August 2018 on a similar topic that I take timed release multivitamins, probiotics before bedtime (sleep has improved). I now use two different brands of timed release multivits – the ingredients are different on both, I alternate daily which one I use.
I now take nootropic supplements for me brain and I have noticed that clinical problem ending ideas crash unbidden in to my consciousness at frequent intervals and concentration is much better, so they seem to work for me – although sometimes the timing of the unbidden ideas are not always convenient.
I really cannot see how it is possible to get full nutrition if calories are reduced – unless there are foods that can give RDA of everything in 800 calories?

A balanced and varied wholefood diet is much more nutritious than the standard US/ UK diet, even with much lower overall calories. Furthermore *some* micronutrients can be stored in body tissues, so short periods of dietary insufficiency are not necessarily problematic.

Wholefoods that are particularly nutrient-dense include oily fish, molluscs such as oysters, organ meats such as liver, seeds, nuts, cocoa. These wholefoods do feature in ‘The Fast 800’ recipes and meal plans.

I do take 400 mg of magnesium about every other day. When I do a lot of excercise or feel that my muscles feel cramped or overworked, I up that to every day for a while.

Apart from that, I just try to get enough fresh veggies and fish during the week. My body is pretty good at telling me what it needs. When I feel a craving for a specific food (I am not talking chocolate or potatoe crisps here 😉 ), I normally eat it.

My doctor says that nutrients are better absorbed through food rather than supplements. I’ve even read an article a while back from The Atlantic by their resident doctor that supplements are a waste of time. It’s odd though that my friends’ doctors have recommended them supplements, seems there is no consensus among physicians.